clearnyc-blog

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Ever wish you had the chance to poll a room of strangers on your company's biggest challenge? It's something big businesses turn to consultancies of all shapes and sizes for - but what happens when you're a start up... managed around a full time job/study - or your company is booming but the money hasn't caught up to the growth? That's where House of Genius comes in. Last week I spent a fascinating evening surrounded by talented folk from many different backgrounds - literally gifting their perspective to a small business with a challenge. The premise is simple: beer, pizza, and a room full of friendly anonymous strangers happy to offer their POV. The anonymity sets a level playing field - first names only with no clue as to people's backgrounds or experience - a level playing field for discussion & debate with no egos. We had 2 small businesses present - one that was trying to figure out their business model to take the next leap into sizeable growth, another built from a personal passion and now starting to push the comfort zone of the founder. They present - you offer your thoughts. Simple and powerful. And at the end of the evening - the big reveal - everyone introduces themselves and what they do.  I'd recommend anyone with a passion for business, a POV and a spare evening to apply (there are multiple Houses around the world) - Ruth

http://houseofgenius.org/apply/nyc 

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The agency is helping NYC Pride put on a virtual parade in Moscow to stand up for gay rights in Russia.

Our office mates and sister company M&C Saatchi have created an awesome virtual PRIDE parade... a great intersection of politics, technology and creativity!

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Clear Impact

A quarterly series of curated conversations, designed to untangle complex marketing challenges and present breakthrough solutions.

www.clear-impact.net

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Smart advertisement from IBM

IBM is committed to creating solutions that help cities all over the world get smarter, in order to make life in those cities better.  To spread the word, IBM created outdoor advertising with a purpose: a bench, a shelter and a ramp that are not only designed to be beautiful, but to be useful to city dwellers as well.

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Bright innovation from Nivea

2 consumer experiences, 92,960,000 miles apart, come together to create a bright piece of innovation 

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Is Instagram the new Facebook for teens?

With teenagers’ parents on Facebook, Instagram is offering youngsters the anonymity that they seek, away from the eyes of their parents. Really interesting trend catching on, especially as Facebook loses steam among younger consumers. 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/justinesharrock/teenagers-are-recreating-facebook-on-instagram

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What brand will double-down on Livestrong?

BREAKING NEWS: Nike drops Livestrong sponsorship. see link for the details: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-nike-livestrong-20130528,0,4686537.story

Is this really breaking news? Lance Armstrong betrayed the sport, his sponsors, those cancer stricken (and saved), society, and even worse, himself. Why would Nike stay involved with a scarred institute, it's name linked to a man, who's accomplishments are all seemingly linked to performance-enhancing drugs. Nike is an authentic brand, committed to building integrity across the sporting community. With this commitment, comes consequences - and the brand must walk away from Livestrong.

But is that really the right decision? Do authentic brands walk away from significant societal-causes in the toughest of times? 

Nike has left behind more than a man. They've walked away from a cause and a community which is invested in supporting those with cancer. Ask yourself - what happens to the body of Livestrong supporters and the cause they've created? And what happens to Nike? Will they agree with Nike? Will they even care? How will employees at Nike react? How will those fighting cancer react?

A brand needs to fill the Nike gap, and 'double down on Livestrong', to help unlock the value of the cause and the community supporting it. 

Here's a controversial story everyone can relate to.

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November 7 1991. One of the NBA's greatest players announces he has HIV. A shocked, scared and uneducated country could only watch and wonder what it meant and how it happened. Next thing you know, many advertisers such as Pepsi and Nestlé dramatically scaled back marketing campaigns featuring him after the public announcement.

20+ years later, Magic Johnson is a role model to HIV positive individuals, who has gone above and beyond to contribute not only to the fight against AIDS, but to significantly improve urban communities. 

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What would the story be for Pepsi and Nestlé if they had been Magic's biggest supporters, instead of his detractor, from the moment of the announcement? I would guess those brands would be plastered everywhere Magic is; not only gaining awareness but also gaining deeper connections with consumers, employees and the communities Magic is committed to supporting.

The opportunity is for a brand to fill the Nike gap. Mobilize the existing community. Stand behind Livestrong. Double down. 

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Fascinating thought piece on cultural brands and ownership - I'll be watching to see where the Maasai end up, and what benefits (cultural, emotional, commercial) they regain....

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The new #JCPenney advert has been doing the social media rounds the last couple of days and it certainly has got people talking

Everyone loves a comeback kid and that certainly seems to be the tone of the day from #JCP as the new advert apologies for the mistake of “not listening to you”. Their contrition is certainly evident - as they urge us back into store to see what they have done

Using the hashtag #jcplistens their activity on Facebook and Twitter certainly seems very sincere about the changes they’ve made and show us that they have learned their lessons and a lot of the social media comments would back that up. I’m sure we will see JCP start to climb back up and put the horrific last 12-18 months behind it

But I can’t help but think that they have missed a little trick here

It feels that JCP is seemingly putting the onus on me. They’ve admitted making the mistake, but it is down to me as the shopper to see that they have changed:

“Come back to JCP. We’ve heard you, now we would love to see you” they implore. But based on the ATL alone, there is precious little reason to do so as it doesn’t actually talk about how the company has changed

Now I realise that the role of the social media campaign is to showcase this (and as above, there is some good stuff here), but if I was one of the millions of lost JCP shoppers who have turned their back on the store, am I going to go to the effort of having to find out what the store is doing? Of course for some of their historical loyalists, I guess their residual love of the store would make them - but for many others, are they going to do it? Over the last 12-18 months, have people moved on and found new retailers that do the basics of listening and responding to their shoppers and therefore replaced the role that JCP used to play?

I posted a couple of months back about my frustration with American constantly telling me how much the airline had/is going to change - but with precious little evidence of it doing so. This advert leaves me feeling a little bit the same way. I hope for JCP that I am in the minority and the love for the brand will prompt people into action…

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Lets keep it simple for a Monday morning!

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Great to see a generally conservative brand do something to spice things up and capture the attention of consumers. Kmart recently released a cleverly playful ad to promote free home shipping, bound to make you laugh!

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An interesting article going around our offices today from the UK:

The Modern Marketeers Manifesto

No doubt from us that these are 12 important things that the modern marketeer is wrestling with. All skills that need to be developed and accomplished with ease

But where is the 'why' - the purpose? This is just a list (and a fairly long list at that) of WHAT - the skills that people need to master

But for marketing to really have a powerful voice, it needs a why - the reason we chose this profession over any other

What do we as marketeers want to change? What makes us angry and frustrated in this world? What is the reason we get out of bed in the morning?

Because I can tell you now, I don't get out of bed because I think that brands are using Twitter incorrectly. Or I don't think content is personal enough. Or brands aren't fully embracing the multi-screen reality

These are all things that the industry need to get better at. But they aren't the rallying call of purpose that I think is essential to any manifesto

Its certainly one to debate - why do you get out of bed in the morning? Why is marketing an industry you are proud of?

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An interesting article about the role of crowd sourcing in recent days in Boston. The opening quote is sure to spark debate:

To enthusiasts it has shown the unparalleled power of modern connectivity and crowdsourcing. The less convinced term it "a million useless monkeys making a million useless speculations"

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How women see themselves and how the world sees them. View all Real Beauty Sketches at http://bit.ly/sketchesdove #wearebeautiful

Great social experiment from Dove ....

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Back to school this afternoon. An afternoon sat in a Columbia university lecture hall harked back to some old memories of years gone by - but no chance of me falling asleep this time! This time it was all about hearing new & exciting ideas for one of our projects We've been working with an MBA class from Columbia on one of our strategic innovation projects. An awesome experience - and demonstrates the real value of co-creation if you find the right people to do it with We believe in focus & definition for creative challenges. Even the most blue sky challenge (that this most certainly is) has parameters. We gave our students real focus on what we wanted them to do, gave them the creative inspiration to think differently and the license to surprise us We emphasised that their job was to challenge us and our client with a perspective that comes from naive expertise. We wanted to understand the ideas and how they could lead to revenue. We immersed them in our business and the revenue model so that the ideas would be commercially rooted. But told them that it was our job to perfect and round the ideas to launch (the perfect use of the core team's skill set) And they've delivered in spades Co creation isn't about "more is more". It's not about asking ever increasing numbers of people in the (often vain) hope that it will generate the 'killer idea' It's about finding the RIGHT people and giving them the RIGHT tools to do the task Very excited about seeing the ideas come to life

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Celebrating Ruth's birthday - finally her years catching up with her wisdom...

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You've probably seen the 1st video from Brene Brown on vulnerability. Here is her 2nd video on shame. Fantastically powerful stuff

"The credit goes to the man in the arena"

A great thing to remember next time the voice inside starts to get noisy...

#leadership #TED #shame